By Jason Guerette (@JPGuerette)
“He was phenomenal, Jerry. And again, Kadary gave us everything he has and I’m proud of his effort, but we worked two days with Jamir running the show, and I thought he did a great job getting us to that 16-point lead, and the next evolution for him is going to be how to manage that 16-point lead a little bit better, but I was proud of not only the way he played offensively, but the way he played defensively.
On Kadary Richmond:
“He was feeling better today, which is great. The problem is he had spent the last four days in bed, so he felt better, which is great news, but the problem is he’s been in bed for four days. Although he felt better, he hasn’t done anything for four days. His energy level was obviously zapped.”
On Seton Hall’s 20-2 run:
“We had a good defensive unit out there — Jamir at the point, obviously Jared and Myles — but I thought Lex and Tyrese did a really good job. Everyone just kind of got lost a lot in the first half, we lost (Bo) Hodges and they made some threes. I thought we did a really good job of staying at home and we had a really good defensive lineup out there that just made everything difficult for them, and we were able to capitalize on the break.”
On team contributions:
“It’s a veteran group. It’s not a cohesive group because we haven’t had that lineup out there that long, ever, but they’re a veteran group that has a lot of confidence. I loved what they were talking about in the huddle, they just kept talking like, ‘let’s just keep getting stops.’ I think they kind of knew we were a little limited in what we could run at that point, but it was a veteran group that was just talking about getting stops. That was nice to hear.”
On Seton Hall’s belief in one another:
“They should. They’ve played well this year. They’ve been together, they’ve had some huge wins, they work hard, they have a great attitude. It’s a great group to be around, and I think they’ve overcome some really tough obstacles, to be honest with you. A tough COVID outbreak, that kind of took a little momentum out of us, and then losing Bryce the way we lost Bryce and to start league play 0-2 with no chance of winning two games, to be 8-8 I’m thrilled. I’m more than thrilled because the circumstances these guys have had to come through, I think that gave them confidence.”
On Tyrese Samuel:
“He looks like he’s back to what he was in December. It’s taken big guys a little longer to come back, but he looks like he’s got great balance. Defensively, he’s playing much more physical than he was, he’s hit the weight room hard, which has helped because technically, three weeks without lifting does damage to a big guy’s body. But he looks much, much better than he did two weeks ago.”
On Seton Hall’s free throw shooting:
“As long as the right guys are taking them, Jerry, we’re pretty good. (Butler) were 10-for-12, so they were pretty good, too.”
On momentum entering Big East tournament:
“You need to ask these old guys. There’s one focus, and one focus only, and that’s Saturday. And we have a tough — I know Xavier lost a tough one in triple overtime — that’s all we’re focused on right now. This time of year, you’re not worried about anything else besides your next game.”
On grinding out close wins:
“I think it’s our shooting. We don’t shoot it great, so we’re going to have to grind out a lot. From a coach’s standpoint, we don’t shoot it great, so we’re always in a close game. It’s a veteran group, and again, I blame COVID for everything, but COVID kind of helped this team gel a little bit early when we all got it in September. When we got it, we kind of had to just hunker down together and we had to change a lot of things that we were doing, and I think I changed the way we ate, I changed the way how we were kind of doing things. In that first shutdown, I think everybody got sick and everybody was kind of just together, and so we kind of just grew as a team and got to know each other because we were just stuck with each other.”
“We don’t have a locker room anymore anyway, but I moved everybody up into my offices. So I made them come up into my offices, and we got all our meals catered up there all the way up until last month, I think, because I was getting tired of having lasagna all over my carpet, so I think I moved them down about a month ago. I’m the first one in the office — me and Kevin Lynch — and I would be cleaning up from the meal the night before. I felt like I finally lost my mind. But we don’t have a place to eat, it’s probably my biggest pet peeve about our facilities, we make due with what we have to do and I said, it’s a new team, let’s all get together, bring them up to the office so they can eat with us, eat with the staff. I made them go around the conference table — I got that big conference room table — and I made them come up. And in the past, I’ve kind of just for meals, let them eat, if they want to take it and go back to their room. But I value these guys’ time tremendously, but it was such a new team and we all had COVID, so I was like, let’s all just eat together. What does it matter at this point? So the guys liked it, we kept doing it, and sometimes meals are kind of the best way to talk and bust balls. I finally stopped, I walked in one day and there had to be three trays of lasagna sitting on the conference table. And I was like, ‘man, I can’t do this anymore.’ The office smelled like lasagna, there’s chicken parm over here, I’m like, ‘man, this is enough.’”
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